IRLF 


Q 


OX  THE 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER 


OF 


JOSEPH    HENEY 


READ   BEFORE  THE 


'HILOSOPHICAL  SOCIETY  OF  WASHINGTON 


.1  A  M  E.S   C.   WELL]  ISTG 


October  26,  1878. 


WASHINGTON: 

188 


:r'ion  &  Co. 


ON  THE 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER 


OF 


JOSEPH   HENRY 


HEAD   BEFORE   THE 


PHILOSOPHICAL  SOCIETY  OF  WASHINGTON.  • 


BY 


JAMES   C.  WELLING, 

: 


October  26,  1878. 


Second    ]Bc3.±'t±oxi.« 


WASHINGTON: 

GOVERNMENT   PRINTING   OFFICE. 

1880. 


[RE-PRINTED  FROM  THE  HENRY  MEMORIAL  VOLUME  PUBLISHED  BY 
ORDER  OF  CONGRESS.] 


THE   LIFE   AND   CHAEACTEE 

OF 

JOSEPH  HENRY.* 

BY 

JAMES  C.  WELLING,  LL.D., 

PRESIDENT  OF  COLUMBIAN  UNIVERSITY. 


JOSEPH  HEXRY  was  born  in  Albany,  X.  Y.,  on  the  17th  of 
December,  1799.  His  grandparents  on  both  his  father's  and 
mother's  side  emigrated  from  Scotland,  and  landed  in  this  country 
on  the  16th  of  June,  1775,  the  day  before  the  battle  of  Bunker's 
Hill.  At  the  age  of  seven  or  earlier,  for  what  reason  is  unknown, 
he  went  to  live  with  his  maternal  grand  mother/ who  resided  at 
Galway,  in  the  county  of  Saratoga,  X.  V.,  and  his  father  having 
died  soon  afterward,  he  continued  to  dwell  for  years  under  her  roof. 
At  Galway  he  attended  the  district  school,  of  which  one  Israel 
Phelps  was  the  master,  and  having  there  learned"  the  rudiments 
of  an  English  education,  he  was  placed  at  the  early  age  of  ten  in 
a  store  kept  in  the  village  by  a  Mr.  Broderick.  Receiving  from 
his  employer  every  token  of  kindness,  and,  indeed,  of  paternal 
interest  in  his  welfare,  the  boy-clerk,  already  remarkable  for  his 
handsome  visage,  his  slender  figure,  his  delicate  complexion,  and 
his  vivacious  temper,  became  a  great  favorite  with  his  comrades, 
who,  according  to  the  customs  of  the  village  store,  were  wont  to 
saunter  about  the  door  in  summer,  and  to  gather  round  the  stove 
in  winter,  for  the  interchange  of  such  trivial  gossip  as  pertains  to 
village  life.  Though  released  at  this  time  for  the  half  of  each  day 
from  the  duty  of  waiting  in  the  store  that  he  might  attend  the 
sessions  of  the  common  school  in  the  afternoon,  it  does  not  appear 
that  he  had  as  yet  evinced  any  taste  for  books,  notwithstanding  the 

*Kead    before   the    "Philosophical  Society   of  Washington,"    October   26,  1878. 
n»lJ,-tin  of  the  Phil.  foe.  W.  vol.  ii.  p.  203.) 

(3) 


562049 


HENRY. 


fact,  as  lie  afterwards  recalled,  that  his  young  brain  was  even  then 
troubled  at  times  with  the  "  malady  of  thought/'  as  he  lost  himself 
in  the  mazes  of  revery  or  speculation  about  God  and  creation  — 
"those  obstinate  questionings  of  sense  and  outward  things/'  which 
the  philosophical  poet  of  England  has  described  as  the  natural 
misgivings  of  a  "creature  moving  about  in  worlds  not  realized." 
"Delight  and  liberty/7  as  was  natural  to  a  bright  boy  in  the  full 
flush  of  his  animal  spirits,  still  remained  the  simple  creed  of  his 
childhood,  until  one  day  his  pet  rabbit  escaped  from  its  warren 
and  ran  into  an  opening  in  the  foundation  of  the  village  church. 
Finding  the  hole  sufficiently  large  to  admit  of  pushing  his  person 
through  it,  he  followed  on  all  fours  in  eager  pursuit  of  the  fugitive, 
when  his  eyes  were  attracted  in  a  certain  direction  by  a  glimmer 
of  light,  and  groping  his  way  toward  it,  beneath  the  church,  he 
discovered  that  it  proceeded  from  a  crevice  which  led  into  the  vesti- 
bule of  the  building,  and  which  opened  immediately  behind  a 
book-case  that  had  been  placed  in  the  vestibule,  as  the  depository  of 
the  village  library.  Working  his  way  to  the  front  of  the  book-case, 
he  found  himself  in  the  presence  of  all  the  literature  stored  on  its 
shelves,  and  on  his  taking  down  the  first  book  which  struck  his  eye, 
it  proved  to  be  Brooke's  Fool  of  Quality,  a  work  of  fiction  in 
which  views  of  practical  life  and  traits  of  mystical  piety  are  artfully 
blended,  insomuch  that  even  John  Wesley  was  inclined  to  except 
it  from  the  auto-da-fe  which,  after  the  manner  of  the  curate  and 
barber  in  the  story  of  Don  Quixote,  he  would  have  gladly  per- 
formed upon  the  less  edifying  products  of  the  novel-writing  imagi- 
nation. Poring  over  the  pages  of  this  fascinating  volume,  young 
Henry  forgot  the  rabbit  in  quest  of  which  he  had  crept  beneath 
the  church.  It  was  the  first  book  he  had  ever  read  with  zest, 
because  it  was  the  first  book  he  had  ever  read  at  the  impulse  of  his 
"own  sweet  will."  Mrs.  Browning  has  told  us  that  we  get  no 
good  from  a  book  by  being  ungenerous  with  it,  by  calculating 
profits  —  "'so  much  help  by  so  much  reading." 

-  "It  is  rather  when 
We  gloriously  forget  ourselves,  and  plunge 
Soul-forward,  headlong,  into  a  hook's  profound, 
Impassioned  for  its  beauty  and  salt  of  truth—' 
"Pis  then  we  get  the  right  good  from  a  book." 


DISCOURSE   OF    DR.  J.  C.  WELLING.  5 

Such  was  the  "soul-forward,  headlong  plunge"  which  the  boyish 
Henry  now  first  took  in  the  waters  of  romance,  rendered  only  the 
sweeter  to  him,  it  may  be,  because,  without  affront  to  innocence, 
they  took  the  flavor  of  "stolen  waters"  from  the  stealth  with  which 
they  were  imbibed.  From  that  time  forth  he  made  frequent  visits 
to  this  library,  by  the  same  tortuous  and  underground  passage, 
reading  by  preference  only  works  of  fiction,  the  contents  of  which 
he  retailed  to  listening  comrades  around  the  stove  by  night,  until, 
in  the  end,  his  patron,  who  shared  in  his  taste  for  such  "light 
reading,"  procured  for  him  the  right  of  access  to  the  library  in  the 
regular  way,  and  no  longer  by  the  narrow  fissure  in  the  rear  of  the 
book-case. 

At  the  age  of  fifteen  he  left  the  store  of  Mr.  Broderick  in 
Gal  way,  and,  returning  to  the  place  of  his  birth,  entered  a  watch- 
maker's establishment  in  Albany,  but  finding  nothing  congenial  to 
his  taste  in  the  new  pursuit,  he  soon  abandoned  it.  At  this  time  he 
had  formed  a  strong  predilection  for  the  stage.  Two  or  three  years 
before,  while  living  at  Galway,  he  had  seen  a  play  for  the  first  time, 
on  the  occasion  of  a  casual  visit  to  Albany,  and  the  impression  it 
made  upon  his  mind  was  as  vivid  as  that  left  by  the  perusal  of  his 
first  novel.  He  described  and  re-enacted  its  scenes  for  the  wonder- 
ment of  the  Galway  youth,  and  now  that  he  was  living  in  Albany 
he  could  give  full  vent  to  his  new  inclination.  His  spare  money 
was  all  spent  in  theatrical  amusements,  until  at  length  he  won  his 
way  behind  the  scenes,  and  procured  admission  to  the  green  room, 
where  he  learned  how  to  put  a  play  on  the  boards  and  how  to  pro- 
duce the  illusion  of  stage  effects.  In  the  skill  with  which  he  learned 
thus  early  to  handle  the  apparatus  of  the  stage  we  may  discern, 
perhaps,  the  first  faint  prelude  of  the  skill  to  which  he  subsequently 
attained  in  handling  the  levers  and  screws  with  which,  according  to 
Goethe,  the  experimental  philosopher  seeks  to  extort  from  nature  the 
revelation  of  her  mysteries. 

Invited  at  this  period  of  his  life  to  join  a  private  theatrical 
association  in  Albany,  known  by  the  name  of  "The  Rostrum,"  the 
young  enthusiast  soon  distinguished  himself  among  his  fellow-mem- 
bers of  riper  years  by  the  ingenuity  of  his  dramatic  combinations 
and  the  felicity  of  his  scenic  effects,  insomuch  that  he  was  made 


6  MEMORIAL   OF   JOSEPH    HENRY. 

President  of  the  Society.  Meanwhile,  the  watchmaker  had  left- 
Albany,  and  young  Henry,  no  longer  having  the  fear  of  the 
silversmith's  file  and  crucible  before  his  eyes,  was  left  free  to  follow 
the  lead  of  his  dramatic  tastes  and  aspirations.  He  dramatized  a 
tale,  and  prepared  a  comedy;  both  of  which  were  acted  by  the 
association.  Indeed,  so  much  was  he  absorbed  in  this  new  vocation 
that  our  amateur  Roscius  seemed,  according  to  all  outward  appear- 
ance, in  a  fair  way  of  making  a  place  for  himself  among  the 
" periwig-pated  fellows  who  tear  a  passion  to  tatters"  on  the  stage; 
or,  at  the  best,  of  taking  rank  with  the  great  dramatic  artists  who, 
standing  in  front  of  the  garish  foot-lights,  "hold  the  mirror  up 
to  nature7'  in  a  sense  far  different  from  that  of  the  experimental 
philosopher,  standing  in  the  clear  beams  of  that  lumen  siccum  which 
Bacon  has  praised  as  the  light  that  is  best  of  all  for  the  eyes  of 
the  mind.  But  in  the  midst  of  these  disguises,  under  which  the 
unique  and  original  genius  of  Henry  has  thus  far  seemed  to  be 
masquerading,  we  have  now  come  to  the  time  when  his  mind  under- 
went a  great  transfiguration,  which  revealed  its  native  brightness, 
and  a  transfiguration  as  sudden  as  it  was  great. 

Minds  richly  endowed,  if  started  at  first  in  a  wrong  direction, 
may  sometimes  have,  it  would  seem,  an  intellectual  conversion  as 
marked  as  that  moral  conversion  which  is  often  visible  in  the  lives 
of  great  saints.  It  certainly  was  so  in  the  case  of  Henry.  Over- 
taken in  the  sixteenth  year  of  his  age  by  a  slight  accident,  which 
detained  him  for  a  season  within  doors,  he  chanced,  in  search  of 
mentat  diversion,  to  cast  his  eyes  upon  a  book  which  a  Scotch  gentle- 
man, boarding  with  his  mother,  had  left  upon  the  table  in  his 
chamber.  It  was  Dr.  Gregory's  Lectures  on  Experimental  Phi- 
losophy, Astronomy,  and  Chemistry.  It  commences  with  an  address 
to  the  young  reader,  in  which  the  author  stimulates  him  to  deeper 
inquiry  concerning  the  familiar  objects  around  him.  "  You  throw 
a  stone,"  he  says,  "or  shoot  an  arrow  upwards  into  the  air;  why 
does  it  not  go  forward  in  the  air,  and  in  the  direction  you  give  it  ? 
What  force  is  it  that  presses  it  down  to  the  earth  ?  Why  does 
flame  or  smoke  always  mount  upward  ?  You  look  into  a  clear  well 
of  water,  and  see  your  own  face  and  figure,  as  if  painted  there; 
-why  is  this?  You  are  told  it  is  done  by  reflection  of  light.  But 


DISCOURSE   OF    DR.  J.  C.  WELLING.  7 

what  is  reflection  of  light?"  etc.,  etc.  These  queries  certainly  are 
very  far  from  representing  the  prudens  qucestio  of  Bacon  in  even 
its  most  elementary  form,  but  they  opened  to  the  mind  of  young 
Henry  an  entirely  "  new  world  of  thought  and  enjoyment."  His 
attention  was  enchained  by  this  book  as  it  had  not  been  enchained  by 
the  fiction  of  Brooke  or  by  the  phantasmagoria  of  the  drama.* 
The  book  did  for  him  what  the  spirits  did  for  Faust  when  they 
opened  his  eyes  to  see  the  sign  of  the  macrocosm,  and  summoned 
him  "to  unveil  the  powers  of  nature  lying  all  around  him."  Not 
more  effectual  was  the  call  which  came  to  St.  Augustine,  when,  as 
he  lay  beneath  the  shadow  of  the  fig-tree,  weeping  in  the  bitterness 
of  a  contrite  soul,  he  seemed  to  hear  a  voice  that  said  to  him :  "  Tolle, 
lege;  tolle,  lege"  and  at  the  sound  of  which  he  turned  away  forever 
from  the  Ten  Predicaments  of  Aristotle,  and  all  the  books  of  the 
rhetoricians,  to  follow  what  seemed  to  him  the  "lively  oracles  of 
God."  Xo  sooner  had  Henry  recovered  from  his  sickness,  than, 
obedient  to  the  new  vision  of  life  and  duty  which  had  dawned  upon 
him,  he  summoned  his  comrades  of  "the  Rostrum"  to  meet  him  in 
conference,  formally  resigned  the  office  of  President,  and,  in  a  vale- 
dictory address,  announced  to  his  associates  that,  subordinating  the 
pleasures  of  literature  to  the  acquisition  of  serious  knowledge,  he 
had  determined  henceforth  to  consecrate  his  life  to  arduous  and 
solid  studies. 

There  are  doubtless  those  wrho,  in  the  retrospect  of  Professor 
Henry's  youth,  as  contrasted  with  the  rich  flower  and  fruitage  of  his 
riper  years,  will  please  themselves  with  curious  speculations  on  what 
"  might  have  been,"  if  his  rabbit  had  never  slipped  its  inclosure,  if 
there  had  been  no  crack  in  the  wall  behind  the  book-case,  or  if 
Gregory's  Lectures  had  never  fallen  in  his  way  at  the  critical 

*He  soon  became  so  much  interested  in  this  book  that  its  owner  gave  it  to  him, 
and  in  token  of  the  epoch  it  had  marked  in  his  life,  Professor  Henry  ever  after- 
wards preserved  it  among  the  choicest  memorials  of  his  boyhood.  In  the  fly-leaf 
of  the  book  the  following  memorandum  is  found,  written  in  the  year  1837:  This 
book,  although  by  no  means  a  profound  work,  has,  under  Providence,  exerted  a 
remarkable  influence  on  my  life.  It  accidently  fell  into  my  hands  when  I  was  about 
sixteen  years  old,  and  was  the  first  book  that  I  ever  read  with  attention.  It  opened 
to  me  a  new  world  of  thought  and  enjoyment;  invested  things  before  almost 
unnoticed  with  the  highest  interest;  fixed  my  mind  on  the  study  of  nature,  and 
caused  me  to  resolve  at  the  time  of  reading  it  that  I  would  immediately  commence 
to  devote  my  life  to  the  acquisition  of  knowledge.— J.  H. 


8  MEMORIAL   OF   JOSEPH   HENRY. 

juncture  of  his  life,  much  as  the  great  mind  of  Pascal  pleased 
itself  with  musing  how  the  fate  of  Europe  might  have  been  changed 
if  the  Providential  grain  of  sand  in  Cromwell's  tissue  had  not 
sent  him  to  a  premature  grave;  or  how  the  whole  face  of  the  earth 
would  have  been  changed  if  the  nose  of  Cleopatra  had  been  a 
little  shorter  than  it  was,  and  so  had  marred  the  beauty  of  face  which 
made  her,  like  another  Helen,  the  teterrima  causa  belli  for  a  whole 
generation.  Such  fanciful  speculations  are  well  calculated  to  import 
into  the  philosophy  of  human  life,  and  into  the  philosophy  of  human 
history,  a  theory  of  causation  which  is  as  superficial  as  it  is  false. 
As  honest  Horatio  says  to  Hamlet  in  the  play,  when  the  latter 
proposes  to  trace  the  noble  dust  of  Alexander  the  Great,  in  imagi- 
nation, until  perchance  it  may  be  found  stopping  a  bung-hole,  one 
feels  like  saying  in  the  presence  of  such  fine-spun  speculations, 
"Twere  to  consider  too  curiously  to  consider  so."  The  strong 
intellectual  forces  which  are  organic  in  a  great  mind,  as  the  strong 
moral  and  political  forces  which  are  organic  in  society,  do  not  depend 
for  their  evolution,  or  for  their  grand  cyclical  movements,  on  the 
casual  vicissitudes  which  ripple  the  surface  of  human  life  and  affairs. 
To  argue  in  this  wise  is  to  mistake  occasion  for  cause,  and  by  con- 
founding what  is  transient  and  incidental  with  what  is  permanent 
and  pervasive,  is  to  make  the  noblest  life,  with  its  destined  ends  and 
ways,  the  mere  creature  of  accident,  and  is  to  convert  human  history, 
with  its  great  secular  developments,  into  the  fortuitous  rattle  and 
chance  combinations  of  the  kaleidoscope.  We  may  be  sure  that 
Henry  was  too  great  a  man  to  have  lived  and  died  without  making 
his  mark  on  the  age  in  which  his  lot  was  cast,  whatever  should  have 
been  the  time,  place,  or  circumstance  which  was  to  disclose  the  color 
and  complexion  of  his  destiny.  The  strong,  clear  mind,  like  the 
crystal,  takes  its  shape  and  pressure  from  the  play  of  the  constituent 
forces  within  it,  and  is  not  the  sport  of  casual  influences  that  come 
from  without. 

Armed,  however,  with  his  new  enthusiasm,  the  nascent  philoso- 
pher hastened  to  join  a  night  school  in  Albany,  but  soon  exhausted 
the  lore  of  its  master.     Encountering  next  a  peripatetic  teacher  of 
ish  grammar,  he  became,  under  the  pedagogue's  drill,  so  versed 
in  the  arts  of  orthography,  etymology,  syntax,  and  prosody,  that 


DISCOURSE   OF    DR.  J.  C.  WELLING. 

IK-  started  out  himself  on  a  grammatical  tour  through  the  provincial 
districts  of  New  York,  and  returning  from  this  first  field  of  his 
triumphs  as  a  teacher,  he  entered  the  Albany  Academy  (then  in 
charge  of  Dr.  T.  Rorneyn  Beck)  as  a  pupil  in  its  more  advanced 
studies.  Meanwhile,  in  order  to  upay  his  way"  in  the  academy, 
he  sought  employment  as  a  teacher  in  a  neighboring  district  school, 
this  being,  as  he  afterwards  was  wont  to  say,  the  only  office  he  had 
ever  sought  in  his  life;  and  in  this  office  he  succeeded  so  well  that 
his  salary  was  raised  from  $8  for  the  first  month  to  the  munificent 
sum  of  §15  for  the  second  month  of  his  service!  From  pupil  in 
the  academy  and  teacher  of  the  district  school,  he  was  soon  pro- 
moted to  the  rank  of  assistant  in  the  academy,  and  henceforward 
had  ample  means  for  the  further  prosecution  of  his  studies.  Leav- 
ing the  academy,  he  next  accepted  the  post  of  private  tutor  in  the 
family  of  the  patroon  in  Albany,  Mr.  S.  Van  Rensselaer;  and, 
devoting  his  leisure  hours  to  the  study  of  the  higher  mathematics, 
in  conjunction  with  chemistry,  physiology,  and  anatomy,  he  at  this 
time  purposed  to  enter  the  medical  profession,  and  had  made  some 
advances  in  this  direction,  when  he  was  called,  in  the  year  1826,  to 
embark  in  a  surveying  expedition,  set  on  foot  under  the  auspices  of 
the  State  government  of  New  York,  for  the  purpose  of  laying  out 
a  road  through  the  southern  tier  of  counties  in  that  State.  Starting 
with  his  men  at  West  Point,  and  going  through  the  woods  to  Lake 
Erie,  he  acquitted  himself  so  well  in  this  expedition  that  his  friends 
endeavored  to  procure  for  him  a  permanent  appointment  as  captain 
of  an  engineering  corps,  which  it  was  proposed  to  create  for  the 
prosecution  of  other  internal  improvement  schemes,  but  the  bill 
projected  for  this  purpose  having  fallen  through,  Mr.  Henry 
again  accepted,  though  with  some  reluctance,  a  vacant  chair  which 
was  oifered  him  in  the  Albany  Academy. 

In  connection  with  the  duties  of  this  chair,  he  ftow  commenced 
a  series  of  original  experiments  in  natural  philosophy -»- the  first 
connected  series  which  had  been  prosecuted  in  this  country.  Dr. 
Hare,  indeed,  had  already  invented  the  compound  blowpipe,  as 
Franklin  before  him,  by  his  brilliant  but  desultory  labors,  had 
given  an  immense  impulse  to  the  science  of  electricity;  yet  none 
the  less  is  it  true  that  regular  and  systematic  investigations,  designed 


10  MEMORIAL   OF   JOSEPH    HENRY. 

to  push   forward  the  boundaries  of  knowledge  abreast  with  the 
scientific  workers  of  Europe,  had  hardly  been  attempted  at  that  : 
time  in  the  United  States. 

The  achievements  of  Henry  in  this  direction  soon  began  to  win 
for  him  an  increase  of  reputation  as  well  as  an  increase  of  knowl- 
edge; but  in  the  midst  of  the  fervors  which  had  come  to  quicken 
his  genius,  he  was  visited  by  the  fancy  (or  was  it  a  fact?)  that  a 
few  of  the  friends  who  had  hitherto  supported  him  in  his  high 
ambition  were  now  beginning  to  look  a  little  less  warmly  on  his 
aspirations.  Suffering  from  this  source  the  mental  depression 
which  was  natural  to  a  sensitive  spirit,  no  less  remarkable  for  its 
modesty  than  for  its  merit,  he  found  solace  in  the  friendly  words 
of  good  cheer  and  hopefulness  addressed  to  him  by  Mr.  William 
Dunlap.*  While  one  day  making,  with  Mr.  Henry,  a  trip  down 
the  Hudson  River  on  board  the  same  steamboat,  Mr.  Dunlap 
observed  in  the  young  teacher's  face  the  marks  of  sadness,  and,  on 
learning  its  cause,  he  laid  his  hand  affectionately  on  Henry's 
shoulder,  and  closed  some  reassuring  advice  with  the  prophetic 
words,  "Albany  will  one  day  be  proud  of  her  son."  The  presage 
was  destined  to  be  abundantly  confirmed.  Soon  afterward  came 
the  call  to  Princeton  College,  and,  because  of  the  wider  career  it 
opened  to  him,  the  call  was  as  grateful  to  Henry  as  its  acceptance 
was  gratifying  to  the  friends  of  that  institution.  And  shortly 
before  this  promotion  a  new  happiness  had  come  to  crown  his  life 
in  his  marriage  to  the  excellent  lady  who  still  survives  him. 

He  entered  upon  the  duties  of  his  new  post  in  the  month  of 
November,  1832,  and  bringing  with  him  a  budding  reputation, 
which  soon  blossomed  into  the  highest  scientific  fame,  he  became 
the  pride  and  ornament  of  the  Princeton  Faculty.  The  prestige 
of  his  magnets  attracted  students  from  all  parts  of  the  country; 
but  the  magnetism  of  the  man  was  better  far  than  any  work  of 
his  cunning  hand  or  fertile  brain.  It  was  in  Princeton,  as  he 
was  afterward  wont  to  say,  that  he  spent  the  happiest  days  of 
his  life,  and  they  were  also  among  the  most  fruitful  in  scientific 

*This  Mr.  Dunlap  had  been  the  manager  of  the  Park  Theatre  in  New  York, 
and  combined  \vith  his  dramatic  vocation  the  pursuits  of  literature  and  the 
painter's  art.  He  wrote  the  "  History  of  Arts  and  Designs  in  the  United  States,"  a 
work  which  was  esteemed  a  standard  one  at  the  date  of  its  first  publication  in  ls.54. 


DISCOURSE    OF    DR.  J.  C.  WELLING.  11 

» li-n. very.  Leaving  the  record  of  his  particular  achievements  at 
this  epoch  to  be  told  by  Mr.  Taylor,  who  is  so  well  qualified  to 
do  them  justice,  I  beg  leave  only  to  refer  to  this  period  in  the 
career  of  Professor  Henry  as  that  in  which  it  was  my  good  for- 
tune to  come,  for  the  first  time,  under  the  personal  influence  of  the 
great  philosophical  scholar,  who,  after  being  my  teacher  in  science 
during  the  days  of  my  college  novitiate  at  Princeton,  continued 
during  the  whole  of  his  subsequent  life  to  honor  me  with  a  friend- 
ship which  was  as  much  my  support  in  every  emergency  that  called 
for  counsel  and  guidance  as  it  was  at  all  times  my  joy  and  the 
'•rown  of  my  rejoicing. 

In  the  year  1847,  when  Professor  Henry  was  in  the  forty-eighth 
year  of  his  age,  he  was  unanimously  elected  by  the  Regents  of  the 
Smithsonian  Institution  as  its  Secretary,  or  Director.  At  that  time 
the  institution  existed  only  in  name,  under  the  organic  act  passed  by 
Congress  for  its  incorporation,  in  order  to  give  effect  to  the  bequest 
of  James  Smithson,  Esq.,  of  London,  who  by  his  last  will  and 
testament  had  given  the  whole  of  his  property  to  the  United  States 
to  found  at  Washington,  under  the  name  of  the  "Smithsonian  Insti- 
tution/' an  establishment  for  "the  increase  and  diffusion  of  knowl- 
edge among  men."  It  does  not  need  to  be  said  that  Professor 
Henry  did  not  seek  this  appointment.  It  came  to  him  unsolicited, 
but  it  came  to  him  from  the  Board  of  Regents  not  only  by  the  free 
choice  of  its  members,  but  also  at  the  suggestion  and  with  the 
approval  of  European  men  of  science,  like  Sir  David  Brewster, 
Faraday,  and  Arago,  as  also  of  American  scientific  men,  like  Bache 
and  Silliman  and  Hare.  I  well  remember  to  have  heard  the  late 
George  M.  Dallas  (a  member  of  the  constituent  Board  of  Regents 
by  virtue  of  his  office  as  Vice-President  of  the  United  States) 
make  the  remark  on  a  public  occasion,  immediately  after  the  elec- 
tion of  Professor  Henry  as  Director  of  the  Smithsonian  Institution, 
that  the  Board  had  not  had  the  slightest  hesitation  in  tendering 
the  appointment  to  him  "as  being  peerless  among  the  recognized 
heads  of  American  science.'7 

At  the  invitation  of  the  Regents  he  drew  up  an  outline  plan  of 
the  Institution,  and  the  plan  was  adopted  by  them  on  the  1 3th  of 


12  MEMORIAL   OF   JOSEPH    HENRY. 

December,  1847.  The  members  of  this  Society,  living,  as  they  do, 
beneath  the  shadow  of  the  great  Institution  to  which  Smithson 
worthily  gave  his  name  and  his  estate,  but  of  which  Henry  was  at 
once  the  organizing  brain  and  the  directing  hand  from  the  date  of 
its  inception  down  to  the  day  of  his  death,  do  not  need  that  I  should 
sketch  for  them  the  theory  on  which  it  was  projected  by  its  first 
Secretary,  or  that  I  should  rehearse  in  detail  the  long  chronicle  of 
the  useful  and  multiform  services  which  in  pursuit  of  that  theory  it 
has  rendered  to  the  cause  of  science  and  of  human  progress.  And, 
moreover,  in  doing  so  I  should  here  again  imprudently  trench  on  the 
province  assigned  to  my  learned  colleague.  But  I  may  be  allowed 
to  portray  the  method  and  spirit  which  he  brought  to  the  duties  of 
this  exacting  post,  at  least  so  far  as  to  say  that  he  proved  himself 
as  great  in  administration  as  he  was  great  in  original  research ;  as 
skilful  in  directing  the  scientific  labors  of  others  as  he  was  skilful 
in  the  conduct  of  his  own.  Seizing,  as  with  an  intuitive  eye,  the 
peculiar  genius  of  an  institution  which  was  appointed  to  "  increase 
knowledge"  and  to  "diffuse19  it  "among  men,"  he  touched  the 
springs  of  scientific  inquiry  at  a  thousand  points  in  the  wide  domain 
of  modern  thought,  and  made  the  results  of  that  inquiry  accessible 
to  all  with  a  catholicity  as  broad  as  the  civilized  world.  And  the 
publications  of  the  Smithsonian  Institution,  valuable  as  they  are, 
and  replete  as  they  are  with  contributions  to  human  knowledge, 
represent  the  least  part  of  his  manifold  labors  in  connection  with  the 
Institution.  His  correspondence  was  immense,  covering  the  whole 
field  of  existing  knowledge,  and  ranging,  in  the  persons  addressed, 
from  the  genuine  scientific  scholar  in  all  parts  of  the  world  to  the 
last  putative  discoverer  of  perpetual  motion,  or  the  last  embryo 
mathematician  who  supposed  himself  to  have  squared  the  circle. 

In  accepting  a  post  where  he  was  called  by  virtue  of  his  office  to 
promote  the  labors  of  other  men  rather  than  his  own,  Professor 
Henry  distinctly  saw  that  he  was  renouncing  for  himself  the  paths 
of  scientific  glory  on  which  he  had  entered  so  auspiciously  at  Albany 
and  Princeton.  He  once  said  to  me,  in  one  of  the  self-revealing 
moods  in  which  he  sometimes  unbosomed  himself  to  his  intimate 
friends,  that  in  accepting  the  office  of  Smithsonian  Secretary  he  was 
conscious  that  he  had  "sacrificed  future  fame  to  present  reputation." 


DISCOURSE   OF   DR.  J.  C.  WELLING.  13 

He  was  in  the  habit  of  recalling  that  Newton  had  made  no  dis- 
coveries after  he  was  appointed  Warden  of  the  Mint  in  1695,*  and 
the  remark  is  historically  accurate,  unless  we  should  incline  with 
Biot,  against  the  better  opinion  of  Sir  David  Brewster,  to  place 
after  that  date  the  "  discoveries "  which  Newton  supposed  himself 
to  have  made  in  the  Scriptural  chronology  and  in  the  interpretation 
of  the  Apocalypse  —  discoveries  which,  whenever  made,  provoked 
the  theological  scoff,  as  they  perhaps  deserved  the  theological  criti- 
cism, of  the  polemical  Bishop  Warburton.  Yet,  having  convinced 
himself  that  it  was  a  duty  he  owed  to  the  cause  of  science  to  sink 
his  own  personality  in  the  impersonal  institution  he  was  called  to 
conduct,  Henry  never  paused  for  an  instant  to  confer  with  flesh 
and  blood,  but  moved  "right  onward"  in  the  path  of  duty,  with 
only  the  more  of  steadfastness  because  he  felt  that  it  was  for  him  a 
path  of  sacrifice. 

How  sedulously  he  strove  to  maintain  the  Institution  in  the  high 
vocation  to  which  he  believed  it  was  appointed  no  less  by  a  sacred 
regard  for  the  will  of  its  founder  than  by  an  intelligent  zeal  for  the 
promotion  of  human  welfare,  is  known  to  you  all.  And  the  suc- 
cess with  which  he  resisted  all  schemes  for  the  impoverishment  of  the 
exalted  function,  it  was  fitted  to  perform  in  the  service  of  abstract 
science,  is  a  tribute  at  once  to  his  rare  executive  skill  and  to  the 
native  force  of  character  which  made  him  a  tower  of  strength  against 
the  clamors  of  popular  ignorance  and  the  assaults  of  charlatanism. 
Whatever  might  be  the  consequences  to  himself  personally,  he  was 
determined  to  magnify  its  vocation  and  make  it  honorable.  And 
hence  I  do  not  permit  myself  to  doubt  that  during  the  long  period 
of  his  administration  as  Secretary  of  the  Smithsonian  Institution, 
covering  a  period  of  thirty  years,  he  has  impressed  upon  its  conduct 
a  definite  direction  which  his  successors  will  be  proud  to  maintain, 
not  simply  in  reverence  for  the  memory  of  their  illustrious  prede- 
cessor, but  also  in  grateful  recognition  of  the  fruitful  works  which, 

*The  effect  of  the  Wardenship  on  Newton's  scientific  labors  may  be  seen  in  the 
warmth  with  which  he  rebuked  Flamsteed  for  purposing  to  publish,  in  1698,  the 
fact  that  Newton  was  then  engaged  on  a  revision  of  the  Horroxian  theory  of  the 
moon.  Newton  wrote:  "I  do  not  love  to  be  printed  on  every  occasion,  much  less 
to  be  dunned  and  teased  by  foreigners  about  mathematical  things,  or  to  be  thought 
by  our  own  people  to  be  trifling  au'dii  //*.'/  time  when  I  should  be  about  the  King's  bust- 


14  MEMORIAL    OF    JOSEPH    HENRY. 

in  the  pursuit  of  his  enlightened  plans,  will  continue  to  follow  him 
now  that  he  has  rested  from  his  labors. 

The  rest  into  which  he  has  entered  came  to  him  in  a  green  old 
age,  after  a  life  as  full  of  years  as  it  was  full  of  honors.  He  was 
not  only  blest  with  an  old  age  which  was 


serene  and  bright, 


And  lovely  as  a  Lapland  night, 

but  he  also  had  that  which,  according  to  the  great  dramatist,  should 
accompany  old  age —  "As  honor,  love,  obedience,  troops  of  friends/' 
And  the  manner  of  his  death  was  in  perfect  keeping  with  the  man- 
ner of  his  life.  Assured  for  months  before  the  inevitable  hour  came 
that  his  days  on  earth  were  numbered,  he  made  no  change  in  his 
daily  official  employments,  no  change  in  his  social  and  literary  diver- 
sions. None  was  needed.  Surprise,  I  learn,  has  been  expressed 
that  in  the  full  prospect  of  death  he  should  have  "  talked"  so  little 
about  it.  But  the  surprise  is  quite  unfounded.  Professor  Henry 
was  little  in' the  habit  of  talking  about  himself  at  any  time.  Yet 
to  his  intimate  friends  he  spoke  freely  and  calmly  about  his  ap- 
proaching end.  Two  weeks  before  he  died  he  said  to  one  such,  a 
gentleman  from  New  York,  to  whom  he  was  strongly  attached :  "  I 
may  die  at  any  moment.  I  would  like  to  live  long  enough  to  com- 
plete some  things  I  have  undertaken,  but  I  am  content  to  go.  I 
have  had  a  happy  life,  and  I  hope  I  have  been  able  to  do  some 
good.'7  In  an  hour's  conversation  which  I  had  with  him  six  days 
before  he  died,  he  referred  to  the  imminence  of  his  death  with  the 
same  philosophic  and  Christian  composure.  And  perfectly  aware 
as  he  was,  on  the  day  before  he  died,  and  on  the  day  of  his  death, 
that  he  had  already  entered  the  Dark  Valley,  he  feared  no  evil  as 
he  looked  across  it,  but,  poised  in  a  sweet  serenity,  preserved  his 
soul  in  patience,  at  an  equal  remove  from  rapture  on  the  one  hand 
or  anything  like  dismay  on  the  other.  For  his  friends  he  had  even 
then  the  same  benignant  smile,  the  same  warm  pressure  of  the  hand, 
and  the  same  affable  words  as  of  yore.  With  the  astronomer,  New- 
<*>mb,  he  pleasantly  and  intelligently  discoursed  about  the  then 
recent  transit  of  Mercury  —  not  unheedful  of  the  great  transit  he 
was  making,  but  giving  heed  none  the  less  to  every  opportunity  for 
the  inquiry  of  truth.  Toward  the  attendants  watching  around  his 


DISCOURSE   OF   DR.  J.  C.  WELLING.  15 

couch  he  was  as  observant  as  ever  of  all  the  "small  sweet  courtesies" 
which  marked  consideration  for  others  rather  than  for  himself 
even  in  the  supreme  moment  of  his  dissolution.  The  disciples  of 
Socrates  recalled,  with  a  sort  of  pathetic  wonder  at  the  calm  and 
intrepid  spirit  of  their  dying  master,  that  as  the  chill  of  the  fatal 
hemlock  was  stealing  toward  his  heart,  he  uncovered  his  face  to  ask 
that  Crito  should  acquit  him  of  a  small  debt  he  owed  to  ^Escula- 
pius ;  and  so  in  like  manner  I  recall  that  our  beloved  chief  did  not 
forget  in  the  hour  of  his  last  agony  to  make  provision  for  the  due 
dispatch  of  a  letter  of  courtesy,  which  on  'the  day  before  he  had 
promised  to  a  British  stranger. 

And  so  in  the  full  possession  of  all  his  great  mental  powers — in 
his  waking  hours  filled  with  high  thoughts  and  with  a  peace  which 
passed  all  understanding;  in  his  sleep  stealing  away 

"To  dreamful  wastes  where  footless  fancies  dwell,'' 

and  talking  even  there  of  experiments  in  sound  on  board  the  steamer 
Mistletoe,  or  haply  taking  note  of  electric  charges  sent  through  im- 
aginary wires  at  his  bidding,*  —  the  soul  of  Joseph  Henry  passed 
awav  from  the  earth  which  he  had  blessed  and  brightened  by  his 
presence,  f 

From  these  imperfect  notes  on  the  life  of  Professor  Henry  I 
pass  to  consider  some  of  his  traits  and  characteristics  as  a  man. 

He  was  endowed  with  a  physical  organization  in  which  the  ele- 
ments were  not  only  fine  and  finely  mixed,  but  were  cast  in  a  mould 
remarkable  for  its  symmetry  and  manly  beauty.  The  perfection  of 
his  "outward  man"  was  not  unworthy  of  the  "inward  man"  whom 
it  enshrined,  and  if,  as  a  church  father  has  phrased  it,  "the  human 
soul  is  the  true  Shechinah,"  it  may  none  the  less  be  said  that  the 
human  body  never  appears  to  so  much  advantage  as  when,  trans- 
figured by  this  Shechinah,  it  offers  to  the  informing  spirit  a  temple 
which  is  as  stately  as  it  is  pure.  AVhen  Dr.  Bentley  was  called  to 
write  the  epitaph  of  Cotes,  (that  brilliant  scholar  of  whom  Newton 

*  Professor  Henry  took  great  delight  in  the  acoustical  researches  which,  during 
the  closing  years  of  his  life,  he  made  at  sea  on  board  the  steamer  Mistletoe,  while  it 
was  in  electricity  that  he  won  his  first  triumphs  as  a  scientific  man.  That  his  first 
love  and  last  passion  in  science  still  filled  his  thoughts  in  his  dying  moments  was 
attested  by  the  words  which  even  then  fell  from  his  lips,  in  sleep. 

tHe  died  ten  minutes  after  twelve  o'clock,  on -the  13th  of  May,  1878. 


16  MEMORIAL   OF   JOSEPH    HENRY. 

said  that  "if  he  had  lived  we  might  have  known  something,'5) 
the  accomplished  master  of  words  thought  it  not  unmeet  to  record 
that  the  fallen  Professor,  who  had  been  snatched  away  by  a  pre- 
mature death,  was  only  "the  more  attractive  and  lovely  because 
the  virtues  and  graces  which  he  joined  to  the  highest  repute  for 
learning  were  embellished  by  a  handsome  person."  The  same  tribute 
of  admiration  might  be  paid  with  equal  justice  to  the  revered  Pro- 
fessor whose  "good  gray  head"  has  just  vanished  from  our  sight. 

The  fascination  of  Professor  Henry's  manner  was  felt  by  all 
who  came  within  the  range  of  its  influence — by  men  with  whom  he 
daily  consorted  in  business,  in  college  halls,  and  in  the  scientific 
academy;  by  brilliant  women  of  society  who,  in  his  gracious  pres- 
ence, owned  the  spell  of  a  masculine  mind  which  none  the  less  was 
feminine  in  the  delicacy  of  its  perceptions  and  the  purity  of  its  sensi- 
bilities; by  children,  who  saw  in  the  simplicity  of  his  unspoiled 
nature  a  geniality  and  a  kindliness  which  were  akin  to  their  own. 
A  French  thinker  has  said  that  in  proportion  as  one  has  more  intel- 
lectuality he  finds  that  there  are  more  men  who  possess  original 
qualities.  It  was  the  breadth  and  catholicity  of  Henry's  intelligence 
which  enabled  him  to  find  something  unique  and  characteristic  in 
persons  who  were  flat,  stale,  and  unprofitable  to  the  average  mind. 

Gifted  with  a  mental  constitution  which  was  "feelingly  alive  to 
each  fine  impulse,"  he  possessed  a  high  degree  of  aesthetic  sensibility 
to  the  beautiful  in  nature  and  in  art.  It  cannot  be  doubted  that  a 
too  exclusive  addiction  to  the  analytic  and  microscopic  study  of 
nature,  at  the  instance  of  science,  has  a  tendency  to  blunt  in  some 
minds  a  delicate  perception  for  the  "large  livingness"  of  Nature, 
considered  as  a  source  of  poetic  and  moral  inspiration,  but  no  such 
tendency  could  be  discovered  in  the  intellectual  habitudes  of  Pro- 
fessor Henry.  To  a  mind  long  nurtured  by  arts  of  close  and  crit- 
ical inquiry  into  the  logic  of  natural  law  he  none  the  less  united  a 
heart  which  was  ever  ready  to  leap  with  joy  at  "the  wonder  and 
bloom  of  the  world."  When  on  the  occasion  of  his  first  visit  to 
England,  in  the  year  1837,  he  was  travelling  by  night  in  a  stage- 
coach through  Salisbury  Plain,  he  hired  the  driver  to  stop,  while 
all  his  fellow-passengers  were  asleep,  that  he  might  have  the  privi- 
lege of  inspecting  the  ruins  of  Stoneheiige,  as  seen  by  moonlight, 


DISCOURSE    OF    Dll.  J.  ('.  AVET.LI  N« -.  17 

and  brought  away  a  weird  sen.se  of  mystery  which  followed  him  in 
all  his  after  life.  At  a  later  day,  in  the  year  1870,  after  visiting 
the  Aar  Glacier,  the  scene  of  Professor  Agassiz's  well-known  labors, 
he  crossed  over  the  mountain  to  the  Rhone  Valley,  until,  at  a  sudden 
turn  of  the  road,  he  came  full  in  the  presence  of  the  majestic  Glacier 
of  the  Rhone.  For  minutes  he  stood  silent  and  motionless;  then, 
turning  to  the  daughter  who  stood  by  his  side,  he  exclaimed,  with 
the  tears  running  down  his  cheeks:  "This  is  a  place  to  die  in.  We 
should  go  no  further." 

And  as  he  rejoiced  in  natural  scenery  so  also  was  he  charmed  with 
the  beauties  of  art,  and  felt  as  much  at  home  in  the  atelier  of  the 
painter  or  sculptor  as  in  the  laboratory  of  the  chemist  or  the  appa- 
ratus room  of  the  natural  philosopher,  and  exulted  as  sincerely  in 
the  Louvre  or  the  Corcoran  Gallery  of  Art  as  in  the  cabinet  of  the 
mineralogist  or  the  museum  of  the  naturalist. 

He  was  as  remarkable  for  the  simplicity  of  his  nature  as  for  the 
breadth  of  his  mind  and  the  acumen  of  his  intellect.  Those  who 
analyze  the  nature  and  charm  of  simplicity  in  a  great  mind  suppose 
themselves  to  find  the  secret  of  both  in  the  fact  that  simplicity, 
allied  with  greatness,  works  its  marvels  with  a  sweet  unconscious- 
ness of  its  own  superior  excellence,  and  it  works  them  with  this 
unconsciousness  because  it  is  greater  than  it  knows.  Talent  does 
what  it  can.  Genius  does  what  it  must.  And  in  this  respect,  as  an 
English  writer  has  said,  there  is  a  great  analogy  between  the  highest 
goodness  and  the  highest  genius;  for  under  the  influence  of  either, 
the  spirit  of  man  may  scatter  light  and  splendor  around  it,  without 
admiring  itself  or  seeking  the  admiration  of  others.  And  it  was 
in  this  sense  that  the  simplicity  of  Henry's  nature  expressed  itself 
in  acts  of  goodness  and  in  acts  of  high  intelligence  with  a  spon- 
taneity which  hid  from  himself  the  transcendent  virtue  and  dignity 
of  the  work  he  was  doing;  and  hence  all  his  work  was  done  with- 
out the  slightest  taint  of  vanity  or  tarnish  of  self-complacency. 

As  might  be  expected,  he  was  a  fervent  lover  of  the  best  litera- 
ture. His  acquaintance  with  the  English  poets  was  not  only  wide 
but  intimate.  His  memory  was  stored  with  choice  passages,  di- 
dactic, sentimental,  witty,  and  humorous,  which  he  reproduced  at 
will  on  occasions  when  they  were  apt  to  his  purpose.  His  famil- 
2 


18  MEMORIAL   OF   JOSEPH    HENRY. 

iarity  with  fiction  dated,  as  we  have  seen,  from  early  boyhood,,  and 
in  this  fountain  of  the  imagination  he  continued  to  find  refreshment 
for  the  "wear  and  tear"  of  the  hard  and  continuous  thought  to 
which  he  was  addicted  in  the  philosopher's  study.  His  knowledge 
of  history  was  accurate,  and  it  was  not  simply  a  knowledge  of  facts, 
but  a  knowledge  of  facts  as  seen  in  the  logical  coherence  and  rational 
explanation  which  make  them  the  basis  of  historic  generalization. 
The  genesis  of  the  Greek  civilization  was  a  perpetual  object  of 
interest  to  his  speculative  mind,  as  called  to  deal  with  the  phenom- 
ena of  Grecian  literature,  art,  philosophy,  and  polity. 

He  was  a  terse  and  forcible  writer.  If,  as  some  have,  said,  it  is 
the  perfection  of  style  to  be  colorless,  the  style  of  Henry  might 
be  likened  to  the  purest  amber,  which,  invisible  itself,  holds  in  clear 
relief  every  object  it  envelops.  Without  having  that  fluent  deliv- 
ery which,  according  to  the  well-known  comparison  of  Dean 
Swift,  is  rarely  characteristic  of  the  fullest  minds,  he  was  none 
the  less  a  pleasing  and  effective  speaker — the  more  effective  be- 
cause his  words  never  outran  his  thought.  We  loved  to  think  and 
speak  of  him  as  "the  Nestor  of  American  Science/7  and  if  his 
speech,  like  Nestor's,  "flowed  sweeter  than  honey,"  it  was  due  to 
the  excellent  quality  of  the  matter  rather  than  to  any  rhetorical 
facility  of  manner. 

He  was  blest  with  a  happy  temperament.  He  recorded  in  his 
diary,  as  a  matter  of  thanksgiving,  that  through  the  kindness  of 
Providence  he  was  able  to  forget  what  had  been  painful  in  his  past 
experiences,  and  to  remember  only  and  enjoy  that  which  had  been 
pleasurable.  The  same  sentiment  is  expressed  in  one  of  his  letters. 
Radiant  with  this  sunny  temper,  he  was  in  his  family  circle  a  per- 
petual benediction.  And,  in  turn,  he  was  greatly  dependent  on  his 
family  for  the  sympathy  and  watch-care  due  in  a  thousand  small 
things  to  one  who  never  "  lost  the  childlike  in  the  larger  mind."  His 
domestic  affections  were  not  dwarfed  by  the  exacting  nature  of  his 
official  duties,  his  public  cares,  or  his  scientific  vigils.  He  had  none 
of  that  solitary  grandeur  affected  by  isolated  spirits  who  cannot 
descend  to  the  tears  and  smiles  of  this  common  world.  He  was  never 
so  happy  as  when  in  his  home  he  was  communing  with  wife  and  chil- 
dren around  the  family  altar.  He  made  them  the  confidants  of  all 


DISCOURSE   01    DR.  J.  C.  WELLINU.  19 

his  plans.  He  rehearsed  to  them  his  scientific  experiments.  He 
reported  to  them  the  record  of  each  day's  adventures.  He  read 
with  them  his  favorite  authors.*  He  entered  with  a  gleeful  spirit 
into  all  their  joys;  with  a  sympathetic  heart  into  all  their  sorrows. 
And  while  thus  faithful  to  the  charities  of  home  he  was  intensely 
loyal  to  his  friends,  and  found  in  their  society  the  very  cordial  of 
life.  Gracious  to  all,  he  grappled  some  of  them  to  his  heart  with 
hooks  of  steel.  The  friendship,  fed  by  a  kindred  love  of  elegant 
letters,  which  still  lends  its  mellow  lustre  to  the  names  of  Cicero 
and  Atticus,  was  not  more  beautiful  than  the  friendship,  fed  by 
kindred  talents,  kindred  virtues,  and  kindred  pursuits,  which  so 
long  united  the  late  Dr.  Bache  and  Professor  Henry  in  the  bonds 
of  a  sacred  brotherhood.  And  this  was  but  one  of  the  many  similar 
intimacies  which  came  to  embellish  his  long  and  useful  career. 

His  sense  of  honor  was  delicate  in  the  extreme.  It  was  not  only 
that  "chastity  of  honor  which  feels  a  stain  like  a  wound,"  but  at 
the  very  suggestion  of  a  stain  it  recoiled  as  instantly  as  the  index 
finger  of  Mr.  Edison's  tasimeter  at  the  "suspicion"  of  heat.  I 
met  him  in  1847,  when,  soon  after  his  election  as  Secretary  of  the 
Smithsonian  Institution,  he  had  just  been  chosen  to  succeed  Dr. 
Hare  as  Professor  of  Chemistry  in  the  Medical  Department  of  the 
University  of  Pennsylvania,  at  a  salary  double  that  which  he  was 
to  receive  in  Washington,  and  with  half  the  year  open  to  free 
scientific  investigation,  because  free  from  professional  duties.  It 
was,  he  said,  the  post  which,  of  all  others,  he  could  have  desiderated 
at  that  epoch  in  his  scientific  life,  but  his  honor,  he  added,  forbade 
him  to  entertain,  for  a  moment,  the  proposition  of  accepting  it  after 

*  The  following  extract  from  a  diary,  kept  by  one  of  his  daughters,  is  descriptive 
of  his  habits  under  this  head :  "  Had  father  with  us  all  the  evening.  I  modelled  his 
profile  in  clay  while  he  read  Thomson's  Seasons  to  us.  In  the  earlier  part  of  the 
evening  he  seemed  restless  and  depressed,  but  the  influence  of  the  poet  drove  away 
the  cloud,  and  then  an  expression  of  almost  childlike  sweetness  rested  on  his  lips, 
singularly  in  contrast  yet  beautifully  in  harmony,  with  the  intellect  of  the  brow 
above." 

Or  take  this  extract  from  the  same  diary:  "We  were  all  up  until  a  late  hour, 
reading  poetry  with  lather  and  mother,  father  being  the  reader.  He  attempted  Cow- 
per's  Grave,  by  Mrs.  Browning,  but  was  too  tender-hearted  to  finish  the  reading  of 
it.  We  then  laughed  over  the  Address  to  the  Mummy,  soared  to  heaven  with  Shel- 
U-y's  Skylark,  roamed  the  forest  with  Bryant,  culled  flowers  from  other  poetical 
fields,  and  ended  with  Ta7n  O'Shanter.  I  took  for  my  task  to  recite  a  part  of  the 
latter  from  memory,  while  father  corrected,  as  if  he  were  '  playing  schoolmaster.' " 


20  MEMORIAL,   OF   JOSEPH    HENRY. 

the  obligations  under  which  he  had  come  to  the  interests  repre- 
sented by  the  Smithsonian  Institution.  At  a  later  day,  after  he- 
had  entered  on  his  duties  in  Washington,  and  found  the  position 
environed  with  many  difficulties,  Mr.  Calhoun  came  to  him,  and 
urged  his  acceptance  of  a  lucrative  chair  in  a  Southern  college, 
using  as  a  ground  of  appeal  the  infelicities  of  his  present  post,  arid 
the  prospect  of  failing  at  last  to  realize  the  high  designs  he  had 
projected  for  the  management  of  the  Smithsonian  Institution, 
Admitting  that  it  might  be  greatly  to  his  comfort  and  advantage 
at  that  time  to  give  up  the  Smithsonian,  he  declined  at  once  to 
consider  the  proposal  that  was  made  to  him,  on  the  ground  that  his 
"honor  was  committed  to  the  Institution."  Whereupon  Mr.  Cal- 
houn seized  his  hand  and  exclaimed,  "  Professor  Henry,  you  are  a 
man  after  my  own  heart," 

When  in  1853,  and  again  in  1867,  he  was  entreated  by  friends  to 
allow  the  use  of  his  name  in  connection  with  a  call  to  the  Presi- 
dency of  Princeton  College,  the  college  of  his  love,  and  the  scene  of 
his  "happiest  days/'  he  instantly  turned  away  from  the  lure,  as  feel- 
ing that  he  could  not  love  the  dear  old  college  so  much  if  he  loved 
not  more  the  honor  and  duty  which  bound  him  to  the  establishment 
in  Washington,  with  which,  for  good  or  for  evil,  he  had  wedded  his 
name  and  fortune.  And  in  all  other  concerns,  from  the  greatest  to 
the  least,  he  seemed  like  one 

Intent  each  lurking  frailty  to  disclaim, 
And  guard  the  way  of  life  from  all  offence, 
Suffered  or  done. 

The  "Man  of  Ross,"  portrayed  by  the  pencil  of  Pope,  was  not 
more  benevolent  in  heart  or  act  than  Professor  Henry.  His 
bounty  was  large  and  free.  The  full  soul  mantled  in  his  ( eyes  at 
every  tale  of  woe,  and  the  generous  hand  was  quick  to  obey  the 
charitable  impulses  of  his  sympathetic  nature.  This  benevolent 
spirit  ran  like  a  silver  cord  through  the  tissue  of  his  life,  because  it 
was  interwoven  in  the  very  warp  and  woof  of  his  being,  and 
because  it  was  kept  in  constant  exercise.  It  appeared  not  only  in 
acts  of  kindness  to  the  poor  and  afflicted,  but  interpenetrated  his 
whole  demeanor,  and  informed  all  his  conduct  wherever  he  could 
be  helpful  to  a  fellow-man.  He  did  good  to  all  as  he  had  oppor- 


DISCOURSE   OF   DR.  J.  C.  WKLLIM;.  21 

tunity,  from  "the  forlorn  and  shipwrecked  brother/'  who  had 
already  failed  in  the  voyage  of  life,  to  the  adventurous  young 
mariner  who  sought  his  counsel  and  guidance  for  the  successful 
launching  of  his  ship  from  its  ways.  Many  are  the  young  men, 
who,  in  all  parts  of  the  land,  could  rise  up  to-day  and  call  him 
bii-sed,  for  the  blessing  he  brought  to  them  by  the  kind  word 
spoken  and  the  kind  deed  done,  each  in  its  season. 

Unselfishness  was  a  fundamental  trait  in  the  character  of  Pro- 
fessor  Henry,  and  he  made  the  same  trait  a  fundamental  one  in 
his  conception  of  the  philosopher's  high  calling.  The  work  of  sci- 
entific inquiry  was  with  him  a  labor  of  love,  not  simply  because  he 
loved  the  labor,  but  because  he  hoped  by  it  to  advance  the  cause 
of  truth  and  promote  the  welfare  of  man.  He  never  dreamed  of 
profiting  by  any  discovery  he  made.  He  would  not  even  have  his 
salary  increased,  so  tenaciously  did  he  hold  to  the  Christ-like  privi- 
lege of  living  among  men  "as  one  that  serveth."  This  was  a 
crown  which  he  would  let  no  man  take  from  him.  To  the  Govern- 
ment he  freely  gave,  in  many  spheres  of  public  usefulness,  all  the 
time  he  could  spare  from  his  official  duties.  And  it  was  in  one  of 
these  subsidiary  public  labors,  .as  chairman  of  the  Light-House 
Board,  that  he  contracted,  as  he  believed,  the  disease  which  carried 
him  to  the  grave. 

A  sense  of  rectitude  presided  over  all  his  thoughts  and  acts. 
He  had  so  trained  his  mind  to  right  thinking,  and  his  will  to  right 
feeling  and  right  doing,  that  this  absolute  rectitude  became  a  part 
of  his  intellectual  as  well  as  moral  nature.  Hence  in  his  methods 
of  philosophizing  he  was  incapable  of  sophistical  reasoning.  He 
sat  at  the  feet  of  nature  with  as  much  of  candor  as  of  humility, 
never  importing  into  his  observations  the  pride  of  opinion,  and 
never  yielding  to  the  seductions  of  an  overweening  fancy.  He 
\vu-  sober  in  his  judgments.  He  made  no  hasty  generalizations. 
His  mind  seemed  to  turn  on  "the  poles  of  truth." 

I  could  not  dwell  with  enough  of  emphasis  on  this  crowning 
grace  of  our  beloved  friend  if  I  should  seek  to  do  full  justice  to 
my  conception  of  the  completeness  it  gave  to  his  beautiful  character. 
But  h;r>pi'.v  for  me  I  need  dwell  upon  it  with  only  tnc  k-.sa  of 
emphasis  because  it  was  the  quality  which,  to  use  a  French  idiom, 


22  MEMORIAL    OF    JOSEPH    HENRY. 

"leaped  into  the  eyes"  of  all  who  marked  his  walk  and  conversa- 
tion. In  the  crystal  depths  of  a  nature  like  his,  transparent  in  all 
directions,  we  discern  as  well  the  felicity  as  the  beauty  of  that  habit 
of  mind  which  is  begotten  by  the  supreme  love  of  Truth  for  her 
own  sake — a  habit  which  is  as  much  the  condition  of  intellectual 
earnestness,  thoroughness,  and  veracity  in  penetrating  to  the  reality 
of  things,  as  of  moral  honesty,  frankness,  sincerity,  and  truthful- 
ness in  dealing  with  our  fellow-men.  The  great  expounder  of  the 
Nicomachean  Ethics  has  taught  us,  and  one  of  our  own  moralists 
has  amplified  the  golden  thesis,*  that  high  moral  virtue  implies  the 
habit  of  "just  election"  between  right  and  wrong,  and  that  to 
attain  this  habit  we  need  at  once  an  intelligence  which  is  impas- 
sioned and  an  appetite  which  is  reflective.  And  so  in  like  manner 
all  high  intellectual  virtue  implies  a  habit  of  just  election  between 
truth  and  error — an  election  which  men  make,  other  things  being 
equal,  according  to  the  degree  in  which  their  minds  are  enamored 
with  the  beauty  of  truth,  as  also  in '  proportion  to  the  degree  in 
which  their  appetencies  for  knowledge  have  been  trained  to  be 
reflective  and  cautious  against  the  enticements  of  error.  I  never 
knew  a  man  who  strove  more  earnestly  than  Henry  to  make  this 
just  election  between  right  and  wrong,  between  truth  and  error,  or 
who  was  better  equipped  with  a  native  faculty  for  making  the  wise 
choice  between  them.  He  had  brought  his  whole  nature  under  the 
dominion  of  truthfulness. 

But  while  thus  eager  and  honest  in  the  pursuit  of  truth  he  had 
nothing  controversial  in  his  temper.  It  was  a  favorite  doctrine  of 
his  that  error  of  opinion  could  be  most  successfully  combated,  not 
by  the  negative  processes  of  direct  attack,  rousing  the  pride  and 
provoking  the  contumacy  of  its  adherents,  but  rather  by  the  affirm- 
ative process  of  teaching,  in  meekness  and  love,  the  truth  that  is 
naturally  antagonistic  to  it.  The  King  of  Sweden  and  Norway 
made  him  a  Knight  of  St.  Olaf,  but  St.  Olaf  's  thunderous  way  of 
propagating  Christianity — by  battering  down  the  idols  of  Norway 
with  Thor's  own  hammer  —  is  not  the  way  that  his  American 
votary  would  have  selected.  There  was  nothing  iconoclastic  in 
Henry's  zeal  for  truth.  He  believed  that  there  is  in  all  truth  a 


*Dr.  James  H.  Thorn  well :     Discourses  on  Truth. 


DISCOURSE   OF   DR.  J.  C.  WELLING.  23 

self-evidencing  quality,  and  a  redemptive  power  which  makes  it  at 
once  a  potent  and  a  remedial  force  in  the  world.  Hence  he  never 
descended  to  any  of  those  controversies  which,  in  the  annals  of 
science,  have  sometimes  made  the  odium  stientifieum  a  species  of 
hatred  quite  as  distinct,  and  quite  as  lively,  too,  as  its  more  ancient 
congener,  the  odium  theologicum.  When  once  it  was  sought  to  force 
a  controversy  of  this  kind  upon  him,  and  when  accusations  were 
made  which  seemed  to  affect  his  personal  honor,  as  well  as  the  gen- 
uineness of  his  scientific  claims,  he  referred  the  matter  for  adjudi- 
cation to  the  Regents  of  the  Smithsonian.  Their  investigation  and 
their  report  dispensed  him  from  the  necessity  of  self-defense.  The 
simple  truth  was  his  sufficient  buckler.  And  this  equanimity  was  not 
simply  the  result  of  temperament.  It  sprang  from  the  largeness  of 
his  mind,  as  well  as  from  the  serious  view  he  took  of  life  and  duty. 
He  was  able  to  moderate  his  own  opinions,  because,  in  the  ampli- 
tude of  his  intellectual  powers,  he  was  able  to  be  a  moderator  of 
opinions  in  the  scientific  world.  You  all  know  with  what  felicity 
and  intellectual  sympathy  he  presided  over  the  deliberations  of 
this  Society,  composed  as  it  is  of  independent  scientific  workers  in 
almost  every  department  of  modern  research.  Alike  in  the  judicial 
temper  of  his  mind  and  in  the  wide  range  of  his  acquisitions  he 
was  fitted  to  be,  as  Dante  has  said  of  Aristotle,  "the  master  of  those 
who  know." 

And  this  power  of  his  mind  to  assimilate  knowledge  of  various 
kinds  naturally  leads  me  to  speak  of  his  skill  in  imparting  it.  He 
was  a  most  successful  educator.  He  had  many  other  titles  of  honor 
or  office,  but  the  title  of  Professor  seemed  to  rank  them  all,  for 
everybody  felt  that  he  moved  among  men  like  one  anointed  with 
the  spirit  and  power  of  a  great  teacher.  And  he  had  philosophical 
views  of  education,  extending  from  its  primary  forms  to  its  highest 
culminations  —  from  the  discipline  of  the  "doing  faculties"  in 
childhood  to  the  discipline  of  the  "thinking  faculties"  in  youth 
and  manhood.  No  student  of  his  left  the  Albany  Academy,  in  the 
earlier  period  of  his  connection  with  that  institution,  without  being 
thoroughly  drilled  in  the  useful  art  of  handling  figures,  for  then 
and  there  he  taught  the  rudimental  forms  of  arithmetic,  not  so 
much  by  theory  as  by  practice.  No  student  of  his  left  Princeton 


24  MEMORIAL   OF    JOSEPH    HENRY. 

College  without  being  thoroughly  drilled  in  the  art  of  thinking  as 
applied  to  scientific  problems,  for  then  and  there  he  was  called  to 
indoctrinate  his  pupils  in  the  rationale  as  well  as  in  the  results  of 
the  inductive  method.  And  I  will  venture  to  add  that  no  intelli- 
gent student  of  his  at  Princeton  ever  failed,  in  after  life,  to  recogni/e 
the  useful  place  which  hypothesis  holds  in  labors  directed  to  the 
extension  of  science,  or  failed  to  discriminate  between  a  working 
hypothesis  and  a  perfected  theory. 

Pausing  for  a  moment  at  this  stage  in  the  analysis  of  Professor 
Henry's  mental  and  moral  traits,  I  cannot  omit  to  portray  the 
eifect  produced  on  the  observer  by  the  happy  combination  under 
which  these  traits  were  so  grouped  and  confederated  in  his  person 
as  to  be  mutual  complements  of  each  other.  Far  more  significant 
than  any  single  quality  of  his  mind,  remarkable  as  some  of  his 
qualities  were,  was  the  admirable  equipoise  which  kept  the  forces 
of  his  nature  from  all  interference  with  the  normal  development 
of  an  integral  manhood.  He  was  courtly  in  his  manners,  but  it 
was  a  courtliness  which  sprang  from  courtesy  of  heart,  and  had 
no  trace  of  affectation  or  artificiality;  he  was  fastidious  in  his 
literary  and  artistic  tastes,  but  he  had  none  of  that  dilettantism 
which  is  "fine  by  defect  and  delicately  weak;"  he  was  imbued 
with  a  simplicity  of  heart  which  left  him  absolutely  without 
guile,  yet  he  was  shrewd  to  protect  himself  against  the  arts  of 
the  designing;  he  was  severe  in  his  sense  of  honor  without  being 
censorious;  benevolent  yet  inflexibly  just;  quick  in  perception  yet 
calm  in  judgment  and  patient  of  labor;  tenacious  of  right  without 
being  controversial ;  benignant  in  his  moral  opinions  yet  never 
selling  the  truth;  endowed  with  a  strong  imagination  yet  evermore 
making  it  the  handmaid  of  his  reason;  a  prince  among  men  yet  with- 
out the  slightest  alloy  of  arrogance  in  the  fine  gold  of  his  imperial 
intellect;  in  a  word,  good  in  all  his  greatness,  he  was,  at  the  same 
time,  great  in  all  his  goodness.  Such  are  the  limitations  of  human 
excellence  in  most  of  its  mortal  exhibitions  that  transcendent  powers 
of  mind,  or  magnificent  displays  of  virtue  exerted  in  a  single  direc- 
tion, are  often  found  to  .owe  their  "-splendid  enormity"  to  what 
Isaac  Taylor  has  called  "the  spoliation  of  some  spurned  and 
forgotten  qualities,"  whi'-h  arc  sacrificed  in  the  pursuit  of  a  pmlomi- 


DISCOURSE   OF   DR.  J.  C.  WELLING.  25 

nant  taste,  or  an  overmastering  ambition.*  The  "  infirmities  of 
genius"  often  attest  in  their  subjects  the  presence  of  a  mental  or 
moral  atrophy,  which  has  hindered  the  full-orbed  development  of 
one  or  more  among  their  mental  and  moral  powers.  But  in  Pro- 
fessor Henry  no  one  quality  of  mind  or  heart  seemed  to  be  in 
excess  or  deficiency  as  compared  with  the  rest.  All  were  fused 
together  into  a  compactness  of  structure  and  homogeneity  of  parts 
which  gave  to  each  the  strength  and  grace  imparted  by  an  organic 
union.  And  hence,  while  he  was  great  as  a  philosopher  he  was 
greater  as  a  man,  for,  laying  as  he  did  all  the  services  of  his  scien- 
tific life  on  the  altar  of  a  pure,  complete,  and  dignified  manhood, 
we  must  hold  that  the  altar  which  sanctified  his  gifts  was  greater 
than  even  the  costliest  offerings  he  laid  upon  it. 

It  will  not  be  expected  that  I  should  close  this  paper  without 
referring  to  the  religious  life  and  opinions  of  Professor  Henry. 
If  in  moral  height  and  beauty  he  stood  like  the  palm  tree,  tall, 
erect,  and  symmetrical,-  it  is  because  a  deep  religious  faith  wras  the 
tap-root  of  his  character.  He  was,  on  what  he  conceived  to  be 
rational  grounds,  a  thorough  believer  in  theism.  I  do  not  think  he 
would  have  said,  with  Bacon,  that  he  "had  rather  believe  all  the 
fables  in  the  Legend,  the  Talmud,  and  the  Alcoran,  than  that  this 
universal  frame  is  without  a  mind,"  for  he  would  have  held  that  in 
questions  of  this  kind  we  should  ask  not  what  we  would  "rather 
believe,"  but  what  seems  to  be  true  on  the  best  evidence  before  us. 
He  was  in  the  habit  of  saying  that,  next  to  the  belief  in  his  own 
existence,  was  his  belief  in  the  existence  of  other  minds  like  his  own, 
and  from  these  fixed,  indisputable  points,  he  reasoned,  by  analogy, 
to  the  conclusion  that  there  is  an  Almighty  Mind  pervading  the  uni- 
verse. But  when  from  the  likeness  between  this  Infinite  Mind  and 
the  finite  minds  made  in  His  image,  it  was  sought,  by  a  priori  logic, 
or  by  any  preconceived  notions  of  man,  to  infer  the  methods  of  the 
Divine  working,  or  the  final  causes  of  things,  he  suspected  at  once 
the  intrusive  presence  of  a  false,  as  well  as  presumptuous,  philo- 

*The  phrase,  as  originally  applied  by  Taylor,  is  descriptive  of  certain  incom- 
plete ethical  systems,  but  it  is  equally  applicable  to  certain  typical  exemplifica- 
tions of  human  character,  in  which  "the  strength  and  the  materials  of  six  parts 
of  morality  have  been  brought  together  wherewith  to  construct  a  seventh  part." 


26  MEMORIAL    OF    JOSEPH    HENRY. 

sophism,  and  declined  to  yield  his  mind  an  easy  prey  to  its  bland- 
ishments. To  his  eyes  much  of  the  free  and  easy  teleology,  with 
which  an  under-wise  and  not  over-reverent  sciolism  is  wont  to 
interpret  the  Divine  counsels  and  judgments,  seemed  little  better 
than  a  Brocken  phantom  —  the  grotesque  and  distorted  image  of 
its  own  authors  projected  on  mist  and  cloud,  and  hence  very  far 
from  being  the  inscrutable  teleology  of  Him  whose  glory  it  is  to 
conceal  a  thing,  and  whose  ways  are  often  past  finding  out,  because 
His  understanding  is  infinite. 

As  Professor  Henry  was  a  believer  in  theism,  so  also  was  he  a 
believer  in  revealed  religion  —  in  Christianity.  He  had  not  made 
a  study  of  systematic,  or  of  dogmatic,  theology  as  they  are  taught 
in  the  schools,  and  still  less  was  the  interest  he  took  in  polemical 
divinity,  but  he  did  have  a  theology  which,  for  practical  life,  is 
worth  them  all — the  theology  of  a  profound  religious  experience. 
He  was  a  fresh  illustration  of  Neander's  favorite  saying:  Pectus 
facit  theologum.  The  adaptation  of  the  Christian  scheme  to  the 
moral  wants  of  the  human  soul  was  the  palmary  proof  on  which 
he  rested  his  faith  in  the  superhuman  origin  of  that  scheme.  The 
plan  had  to  him  the  force  of  a  theory  which  is  scientific  in  its  exact 
conformity  to  the  moral  facts  it  explains,  when  these  facts  are  pro- 
perly known  and  fully  understood. 

Hence  he  was  little  troubled  with  the  modern  conflict  between 
science  and  religion.  History,  as  well  as  reason  and  faith,  was  here 
his  teacher.  He  saw  that  the  Christian  church  had  already  passed 
through  many  epochs  of  transition,  and  that  the  friction  incident  to 
such  transition  periods  had  only  brushed  away  the  incrustations  of 
theological  error  and  heightened  the  brightness  of  theological  truth. 
In  a  world  where  the  different  branches  and  departments  of  human 
knowledge  are  not  pushed  forward  pari  passu  —  where  "  knowledge 
comes  but  wisdom  lingers" — he  held  it  nothing  strange  that  the 
scientific  man  should  sometimes  be  unintelligible  to  the  theologian, 
and  the  theologian  unintelligible  to  the  scientific  man.  He  believed, 
with  the  old  Puritan,  that  "the  Lord  has  more  truth  yet  to  break 
out  of  His  holy  word"  than  the  systematic  theologian  is  always 
ready  to  admit;  and  as  the  humble  minister  and  interpreter  of 
nature  he  was  certain  that  the  scientific  man  has  much  truth  to 


DISCOURSE   OF    DR.  J.  C.  WELLING.  27 

learn  of  which  he  is  not  yet  aware.  There  must  needs  be  ferment- 
ation in  new  thought  as  in  new  wine,  but  the  vintage  of  the  brain, 
like  the  vintage  of  the  grape,  is  only  the  better  for  a  process  which 
brings  impurities  to  the  surface  where  they  may  be  scummed  off, 
and  settles  the  lees  at  the  bottom,  where  they  ought  to  be.  It  is 
under  the  figure  of  a  vintage  that  Bacon  describes  the  crowning 
result  of  a  successful  inductive  process.  When  this  process  has 
been  completed  in  any  direction,  it  remains  for  a  wider  critical  and 
reconciling  philosophy  to  bring  the  other  departments  of  knowl- 
edge into  logical  relation  and  correspondence  with  the  new  outlook 
that  has  been  gained  on  nature  and  its  phenomena. 

Erasmus  tells  us  in  his  Praise  of  Folly,  mingling  satire  with 
the  truth  of  his  criticism,  that  in  order  to  understand  the  scholastic 
theology  of  his  day,  it  was  necessary  to  spend  six-and -thirty  years 
in  the  study  of  Aristotle's  physics  and  of  the  doctrines  of  the 
Scotists.  What  a  purification  of  method  has  been  wrought  in 
theology  since  the  times  of  Erasmus!  And  for  that  purification 
the  Church  is  largely  indebted  to  the  methodology  of  modern  sci- 
ence, in  clearing  up  the  thoughts  and  rationalizing  the  intellectual 
processes  of  men.  The  gain  for  sound  theology  is  here  unspeaka- 
ble, and  amply  repays  her  for  the  heavy  baggage  she  has  dropped 
by  the  way  at  the  challenge  of  science — baggage  which  only  im- 
peded her  march  without  reinforcing  her  artillery. 

Hence,  as  a  Christian  philosopher,  Professor  Henry  never  found 
it  necessary  to  lower  the  scientific  flag  in  order  to  conciliate  an  ob- 
scurantist theology,  and  he  never  lowered  the  Christian  flag  in 
order  to  conciliate  those  who  would  erect  the  scientific  standard 
over  more  territory  than  they  have  conquered.  He  had  none  of 
that  spirit  which  would  rather  be  wrong  with  Plato  than  right 
with  anybody  else.  He  wanted  to  follow  wherever  truth  was  in 
the  van.  But  better  than  most  men  I  think  he  knew  how  to  dis- 
criminate between  what  a  British  scholar  calls  the  duty  of  "follow- 
ing truth  wherever  it  leads  us,  and  the  duty  of  yielding  to  the 
immediate  pressure  of  an  argument."  He  saw,  as  the  same  writer 
adds,  that  for  whole  generations  "the  victory  of  argument  may 
sway  backward  and  forward,  like  the  fortune  of  single  battles," 
but  the  victory  of  truth  brings  in  peace,  and  a  peace  which  conies 


28  MEMORIAL    OF    JOSEPH    HEXRY. 

to  stay.  He  swept  the  scene  of  conflict  with  the  field-glass  of  a 
commander-in-chief,  and  did  not  set  up  his  trophies  because  of  a 
brilliant  skirmish  on  the  picket  lines  of  science.  But  he  believed 
in  the  picket  line,  and  rejoiced  in  every  sharpshooter  who  fought 
with  loyalty  to  truth  in  the  forefront  of  the  scientific  army. 

A  man  of  faith,  Professor  Henry  was  a  man  of  prayer.  But 
his  views  of  prayer  were  perhaps  peculiar  in  their  spirituality. 
There  was  nothing  mechanical  or  formal  in  his  theory  of  this 
religious  exercise.  He  held  that  it  was  the  duty  and  privilege  of 
enlightened  Christians  to  live  in  perpetual  communion  with  the 
Almighty  Spirit,  and  in  this  sense  to  pray  without  ceasing.  Work 
was  worship,  if  conducted  in  this  temper.  He  accepted  all  the 
appointments  of  nature  and  Providence  as  the  expressions  of  Infinite 
Wisdom,  and  so  in  everything  gave  thanks.*  He  believed  that 
familiarity  with  the  order  of  nature  and  scientific  assurance  of  its 
uniformity  need  not  and  should  not  tend  to  extinguish  the  instinct, 
or  abolish  the  motives  of  prayer  by  seeming  to  imply  its  futility, 
but  should  rather  tend  to  purify  and  exalt  the  objects  of  prayer. 
The  savage  prays  to  his  idol,  that  he  may  have  success  in  killing  his 
enemies.  The  Hottentot  whips  and  worships  his  fetich  in  blind  but 
eager  quest  of  some  sensual  boon,  that  he  may  consume  it  upon 
Ms  lusts.  The  prayers  of  the  Yedic  Books  are  the  childish  prayers 
of  an  unspiritual  and  childish  people.  "They  pray,"  says  Max 
Mliller,  "for  the  playthings  of  life,  for  houses  and  homes,  for 
cows  and  horses,  and  they  plainly  tell  the  gods  that  if  they  will 
only  be  kind  and  gracious  they  will  receive  rich  offerings  in  return." 
And  do  we,  asks  the  critic  of  comparative  religions,  we  Christians 

*The  "sweet  reasonableness"  into  which  he  had  schooled  his  temper  was  mani- 
fested by  the  great  trial  which  befell  him  in  the  year  1865,  when  the  Smithsonian 
building  suffered  from  the  ravages  of  a  fire  which  destroyed  all  the  letters  written 
down  to  that  date  by  Professor  Henry,  as  Smithsonian  Secretary,  in  reply  to  innu- 
merable questions  relating  to  almost  every  department  of  knowledge.  Besides,  the 
Annual  Report  of  the  Institution  in  manuscript,  nearly  ready  for  the  press,  a  valu- 
able collection  of  papers  on  meteorology,  with  written  memoranda  of  his  own  to  aid 
in  their  digest,  and  countless  minutes  of  scientific  researches  which  he  purposed  to 
make,  all  perished  in  the  flames.  Yet  he  was  more  concerned  about  the  loss  of 
I'.Nhop  Johns'*  library,  which  had  been  intrusted  to  his  care,  than  about  the  loss  of 
his  own  papers  and  records.  Referring  to  the  latter  in  a  note  written  to  his  friend, 
Dr.  Torrey,  a  fe\\-  days  after  the  fire,  he  held  the  following  language:  "A  few  years 
a-o  surh  a  . -annuity  would  have  paraly/ed  me  for  future  efforts,  but  in  my  present 
view  of  life  I  take  it  sis  the  dispensation  of  a  kind  and  wise  Providence,  and  trust  that 
it  will  work  to  my  spiritual  advantage." 


DISCOURSE   OF    3K.  J.  C.  WELLIN<;.  20 

of  this  nineteenth  century,  "do  we  do  much  otherwise/7  if  regard 
be  had  to  the  quality  of  our  petitions?  Professor  Henry  held 
that  it  was  both  the  duty  and  privilege  of  enlightened  Christians  to 
"do  much  otherwise,"  by  praying  pre-eminently,  if  not  exclusively, 
for  spiritual  blessings.  And  hence  he  held  that  the  highest  natural 
philosophy  combines  with  the  highest  Christian  faith  to  transfer  the 
religious  thoughts,  feelings,  and  aspirations  of  man  more  and  more 
from  things  seen  to  things  unseen,  and  from  things  temporal  to 
things  eternal.  This  view  of  his  had  nothing  of  quietism  or  of 
mysticism  in  it.  Still  less  was  it  the  expression  of  an  apathetic 
stoicism.  It  was  only  the  philosopher's  way  of  praying  to  the  great 
All-Father,  in  the  spirit  of  St.  Augustine,  "Da  quod  jubes,  ctjube 
quod  vis" 

I  have  made  this  reference  to  the  opinions  of  Professor  Henry 
on  the  relations  of  science  to  religion,  as  also  on  the  relations  of 
natural  philosophy  to  prayer,  not  only  for  the  light  they  shed  on  the 
character  of  the  man,  but  also  for  a  reason  which  is  peculiar  to  this 
Society,  and  which  it  may  be  a  matter  of  interest  for  you  to  know. 
Immediately  after  his  last  unanimous  election  as  the  President  of 
our  Society,  he  communicated  to  me  his  purpose  to  make  the  rela- 
tions of  science  and  religion,  as  also  the  true  import  of  prayer,  the 
subject  of  his  annual  presidential  address.  He  gave  me  an  outline 
of  the  views  he  intended  to  submit,  and  I  have  here  given  but  a 
brief fesume  of  them,  according  to  my  recollections  of  the  colloquy, 
which  was  only  one  of  many  similar  conferences  previously  had  on 
the  same  high  themes.  He  said  that  it  would  be,  perhaps,  the  last  time 
he  should  ever  be 'called  to  deliver  a  presidential  address  before  the 
Society  he  so  much  loved,  and  that  he  wished  to  speak  as  became 
an  humble  patron  of  science,  believing  fully  in  her  high  mission, 
and  at  the  same  time  as  an  humble  Christian,  believing  fully  in  the 
fundamental  truths  of  Revelation.  That  he  was  not  able  to  fulfil 
this  purpose  will  be  as  much  a  source  of  regret  to  you  as  it  is  to  me; 
but  when  we  compare  the  valediction  which  it  was  in  his  heart  to 
utter,  with  the  peaceful  end  which  came  a  few  months  later  to  crown 
his  days  with  the  halo  of  a  finished  life,  we  may  console  ourselves 
with  the  thought  that  no  last  words  of  his  were  needed  to  seal  on 
our  hearts  the  lesson  taught  by  his  long  and  splendid  career.  Being 
dead  he  yet  speaketh. 


30  MEMORIAL   OF   JOSEPH    HENKY. 

It  is,  indeed,  the  shadow  of  a  great  affliction  which  his  death  has 
cast  upon  our  Society,  but  the  light  of  his  life  pierces  through  the 
darkness,  and  irradiates  for  us  all  the  paths  of  duty  and  labor,  of 
honor  and  purity,  of  truth  and  righteousness,  in  which  he  walked 
with  an  eye  that  never  blenched,  and  a  foot  that  never  faltered.  We 
shall  not  see  his  face  any  more,  beaming  with  gladness  and  with  the 
mild  splendor  of  chastened  intellect,  but  we  shall  feel  his  spiritual 
presence  whenever  we  meet  in  this  hall.  We  shall  never  hear  his 
voice  again,  but  its  clear  and  gentle  tones,  as  from  yonder  chair  he 
expounded  to  us  the  mysteries  of  nature,  will  re-echo  in  the  chambers 
of  memory  with  only  a  deeper  import,  now  that  he  has  gone  to  join 
the  adead  but  sceptred  sovereigns  who  still  rule  our  spirits  from 
their  urns.v 


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